Glacial Deposits.indd - Department of Geography - Geology - Illinois ...

BUILDING AN ARCHIVE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO THE LETTERS OF GEOGRAPHERS
3
By Geoffrey J. Martin
F
rom an earlier time, the writer wished to learn how American geographical institutions
developed, what had been the mechanisms of growth, and at what point and under what
circumstance had the whole evolved into a discipline poised on the threshold of
geographical science. Unfortunately, we did not have available a history of American
geography. Your author wished to help change this state of affairs and decided to make a study
of William Morris Davis, a most remarkable physical geographer. It was Davis who, in the
1880s, conceptualized the origin of the discipline with his scheme of the cycle of erosion
embracing the stages: youth, maturity, and old age. Under his tutelage there emerged a stream
of what might be called human geographers. Davis, by the way, referred to human geography
as ontography.
So the plan constructed was to make studies of three of Davis’s finest students, Mark Jefferson,
Ellsworth Huntington, and Isaiah Bowman. Jefferson specialized in the study of anthropography
(the distribution of population); Huntington initially specialized in the effect of climate on human
behavior (physiological climatology); and Bowman specialized on the individuality of regions
(regional geography). These were the three fundamental designs for study deriving from the
Davisian urging for some of his students to develop a human geography. This author published
the resultant three books concerning the contributions of Jefferson, Huntington, and Bowman
consecutively in 1968, 1973, and 1980.
Each of these books was the product of reading publications of the particular author, and
additionally their correspondence. In days now gone by, letter writing was a very important part
of both academic and intellectual life. And usually it is in the correspondence that the life and
thought of the scholar will stand revealed. There embryonic thoughts and feelings, frequently
never to be published, may be shared with another, especially if the letter writers exchanged
correspondence throughout a lifetime. Two of the best examples of this extended
correspondence are Mark S. W. Jefferson-Isaiah Bowman, 1901-1949, and Richard E. Dodge-
Albert P. Brigham, 1892-1932; each of these exchanges produced more than two hundred
letters. And so one goes in quest of correspondence; such deposits may be found in a library, a
geographical society, a nationally known repository, or a private holding. Warning: Be sure to
correspond with the archivist in advance to learn of particular details, because in some
instances it is required that the seeker have permission from next of kin. And in other instances,
there might be a period of closure concerning the holding or part thereof, which is quite
frequently 25 or 50 years after a death.
The quest for, and examination of, these holdings in far-flung deposits is an integral part of the
undertaking. Accomplishment is hard won, and can otherwise be costly in time and money. Yet
this is where the data reside. This pursuit is both footing and foundation of our field of learning.
It is here where the untold history of our field resides. And study of the archives may have
practical applications. For example, some archivists were employed in the Enigma Project of
World War II; others who have studied archival matters in geography have functioned as
witnesses in a courtroom (e. g., Bowman in the Red River case) and yet others have parsed
disputation of boundary squabbles by exploiting archival data, e. g., Lawrence Martin. And, as
Archivist for the Association of American Geographers since 1986, I have received some 230
inquiries concerning a variety of matters relating to the past, approximately 70 percent of which